Finding a needle in haystack? No problem for Montana Analytical Lab

April 18, 2008|By Carol Flaherty, MSU News Service

BOZEMAN - Heidi Hickes' job is to find the proverbial "needle in the haystack," and she does so regularly. Actually, a needle would be easier to find. At least it is visible. Hickes and her team of 12 at the Montana Analytical Lab at Montana State University document the invisible within about 3,000 samples a year. Part of their job is to search for invisible threats in our water, in fertilizer put on our land or in the feed we give our pets and livestock. They regularly search for trace amounts of heavy metals, pesticides or prohibited substances, such as those that are suspected of causing Mad Cow Disease. The lab is part of both the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station and the Montana Department of Agriculture. The state Department of Agriculture uses the lab to develop data for its enforcement of feeds, fertilizer, pesticide and ground water protection laws. The experiment station's use supports analytical services to farmers, ranchers, researchers and other state agencies on a fee basis. Twenty years ago, staff at the lab worked with a precision that regularly found a drop of contaminant in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, doing data analysis on the level of one part in a billion. Today the sensitivity of their work and equipment is 1,000 times greater. The standard "needle" now makes up just one part in a trillion. Think of that as a fraction with the numeral one over a one and 12 zeros. The USDA uses the Montana lab for its official Pesticide Data Program, and is set to recommend that the lab on the MSU campus be the USDA's only facility in the country to analyze surface water for pesticides. If that proposal goes through, a lab in Minnesota would do similar work analyzing ground water. "That lab is amazing," said Martha Lamont, administrative director of the USDA's Pesticide Data Program in Manassas, Va. "We started the Montana lab with a very small portion (of the work) to see how things would go. Those people took so well. They don't need guidance, they lead the way." The federal pesticide data program is designed to produce statistically reliable human consumption data on pesticides in drinking water, a program that can be highly controversial. For instance, a person may be concerned that their property would lose value if a contaminant is found in area wells. However, in many cases, the effect of such trace amounts of pesticides is not known. "With water, we have to be very careful," Lamont added. To provide reliability and consistency, the labs used for federal water testing regularly are sent standardized samples to test. "We send proficiency samples prepared by a third party, and Montana is always so good that last year we asked if they could expand their testing," Lamont said. To have earned that level of trust from Lamont, quality control at the lab is stringent. The water lab is kept separate from the lab working with soils and the one working with feeds. Glassware is heated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours to burn off residues. Every machine is tested and calibrated with standard samples before every test. Some of the tests look for molecules, and some look for the basic elements from which molecules are built. Both data entry and the results of every test are double checked before being sent out. Not only is there a paperwork trail and a quality control officer, but "people give 110 percent here," Hickes said. "They know what they do is important." The work is not just important for finding pesticides, but also to Montanans in other ways. Its dual identity as the Montana Department of Agriculture's lab and the Agricultural Experiment Station's lab dictates that it provides a wide range of services, and testing Montana's water for pesticides is just the start. "Water analysis is about half of what we do," Hickes said. "The other half is verification of the label information on feeds and fertilizers, and providing nutritional information to farmers and ranchers on their own hay and grain feeds." The lab has a huge Montana-based groundwater testing program, and also tests samples of feed you would give to your pets. So on a given day, the Montana Department of